I am continuing to work on Grooveshark support for Musicality, but in the meantime: a bug fix release to tide you over. In particular, I've (mostly) worked around a bug in Flash 10.1 that causes all of the Flash elements on a page to disappear when the window is minimized or hidden. So if you hide Musicality while Pandora is playing, and then restore it, all of the Pandora music controls will be missing and you'll only see the blue background. This isn't just a Musicality problem; it happens in Safari as well.

My workaround isn't perfect. If you minimize the window before the Flash has had a chance to load, it could still disappear. If this happens to you, simply scroll the window a little bit and the Flash will reappear. Even better, close the window instead of minimizing or hiding, as this seems to avoid the problem altogether.

I'll keep working on the workaround, and perhaps Adobe will be kind enough to come out with a proper fix. Stay tuned!

Also fixed: a bug that would cause Musicality to crash if a song submission to Last.fm failed. As Last.fm's submission servers seem to have a serious case of the hiccups this week, some of you have likely run into this bug.

You can get the latest version by choosing Check for updates... from the Musicality menu.

Hot off the presses, Musicality 1.1 has arrived. Big new feature: scrobbling! (Say what?) The songs you listen to on Pandora can now be sent to Last.fm, where they will be used to generate new music recommendations for you. To enable this feature, visit the newly added Last.fm preference pane and enter your Last.fm member name and password.

The new Last.fm preference pane

Your password will be safely and securely tucked away into the system keychain, and your Pandora music will begin appearing on your Last.fm profile. This was the most asked for feature so far, and top of my own list as well, so I'm very pleased to get it out there. Check it out and let me know what you think!

In the polishing department, this release plays nice with ClickToFlash, a popular Flash-blocking add-on. And I fixed an issue with the Last.fm song tracking which caused Musicality to occasionally display an extra Growl notification.

If you're already running the Public Preview, you can upgrade from right within the application: just choose Musicality > Check for updates... from the menu. Otherwise, take a gander at the Musicality page and download a copy for yourself. I've spent the last two weeks polishing, fixing, and generally knocking out the ugly. It was tough to let it go—there are still so many great things I want to add!—but at the end of the day it's ready for prime time.

My friends know I love my music; I'm listening all day long. I wrote Musicality so I could listen to Pandora and Last.fm while I worked. Not just listen, but actually use them. Create new stations, rate songs, skip songs, discover new music and still stay in the flow of my work. No flipping back and forth between the browser, no juggling extra tabs. Heck, to simply pause the music to take a phone call! In short, to make web music just as easy as iTunes.

Musicality has changed the way I listen to music for the better. I use it every day and, like the quote from Mike, I couldn't imagine life without it. I've really enjoyed watching other people discover it and come to the same conclusion. But as I hinted earlier, this is just the beginning! I still have big plans and this release is just setting the stage for what's to come.

My sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to check out the public preview of Musicality this week, and especially to those who took the time to send me their thoughts. Your feedback was excellent and insightful; I'm excited for the work week to start so I can dig into it.

The most concise summation came from my friend Sean who pointed out that Musicality suffers from "a slight identity crisis". On the one hand it's a Pandora and Last.fm player and a good one; I received plenty of positive feedback in this regard. But its features also work with local iTunes music and it displays the currently playing iTunes track. This confused a few people who (rightly) didn't understand what iTunes was doing in a Pandora player. Others saw the iTunes integration and (also rightly) assumed that Musicality wanted to a be a portal to all of their music (and were disappointed when it came up short).

Having thought all of this over, I believe the way forward is to refocus Musicality on its original goal: a great streaming music player. Here are the changes I plan to make:

I'm going to remove the iTunes integration which, in its current state, is just confusing people. This will also let me be more focused with the new features and documentation.

Since I'm removing features I'm also lowering the price, effective immediately.

I'll improve the first run experience, with a more useful startup screen, better documentation, and more information on the website.

I'll be cranking hard on these changes in the week ahead, and hope to have a new release available soon. In the meantime, please keep that feedback coming! I'd especially like to hear your thoughts, good or bad, on the changes I'm suggesting. You can leave a comment right here or contact me directly.

(Now...all of that said: I listen to music all day every day, and I really want a player that makes all of my music easily accessible, no matter where it lives, in a consistent way. So those of you who were wishing for Musicality to do more rather than less: I hear you, I'll get there, and it will be great.)

I've been hinting about it on Twitter and Facebook, today I am happy to announce Industrious One's first product: Musicality! You can read more about it on the new product page, but in a nutshell Musicality is a Mac OS X desktop client for the Pandora and Last.fm music streaming services. I designed it for people who, like me, love to listen to music while they work. Take all of the great music and features these services offer, liberate them from the browser and give them a proper desktop window, then add in super conveniences like keyboard shortcuts, Growl notifications, and the Apple remote. The result is remarkable: the music becomes something that helps you work, instead of being the work. Training a new Pandora station is fun!

I should mention that Musicality is for the Mac. It uses a few of the latest and greatest features so you'll need Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) or later. And of course, you'll need an account (which you can get for free) on the Pandora and Last.fm websites in order to use their services. If that sounds like you, read more about Musicality here or download it immediately from here. This preview is free to use, without restrictions.

What's a public preview?

This public preview release is a way to get Musicality into your hands sooner. It is still missing some features and there will be bugs that need fixing along the way. But despite these rough edges we're using it every day ourselves, and really enjoying it. We hope you do too, and would love to hear your thoughts on it. Which of the missing features are most important to you? What confuses you or doesn't work quite right? Send us your feedback and help shape Musicality 1.0.

While the preview lasts, we're knocking 25% off the price in recognition of your early adopter support. You'll get the final 1.0 when it becomes available, as well as all the 1.x updates that follow, for a nice discount.

So what's missing?

Here are some of the features we're thinking about. Not all of these will make it into the 1.0 release; your feedback will help determine which ones make the cut.

Easier navigation: We're working on ways to make it faster and easier to switch between songs, stations, and playlists across services, including iTunes.

Mini-player: A iTunes-style mini-player, providing song information and basic controls in a much smaller view.

Last.fm scrobbling: "scrobbling" is Last.fm's term for automatically sending songs you listen to on your Mac to their service. Last.fm can then recommend new music you might like, help you find people with similar tastes, or generate nifty charts and graphs of your listening history. You can read more about Last.fm here.

Support for more services: we'd love to support more streaming services; let us know if there is one you can't live without.

Here are some of the rough edges we know about. We'll be working to smooth these out before we reach the 1.0 release.

Better notifications and feedback: Sometimes you might press one of your keyboard shortcuts or a button on the remote and not know if Musicality heard you. We'll improve the feedback Musicality provides so you never feel ignored.

Launch on login could be easier: Musicality works best when it is sitting in the background, letting you know what is playing and listening for your commands. You can set up your own OS X login item, but we can make it easier.

More polishing: There is still some ugly in there. We'll work to get things all pretty, polished, and shiny before we put the 1.0 sticker on it.

Try it now!

So there you have it! You can read the splashy product page or just go get it and try it out for free. If you're already using Pandora or Last.fm, you should definitely take a look. If you aren't, give them a try! They are both great services, and totally free. Either way, we hope you enjoy Musicality as much we do. And be sure to let us know what you think.

At long last: 4.2! Many, many thanks to everyone who assisted by using the early releases, providing feedback, reporting bugs, and contributing patches. This release, and every release, is better because of your help.

The big news is the freshly minted support for Apple's Xcode IDE. This was a complicated one, so give it a good beating and help shake the bugs out. And while you're doing that, I'll be squeezing in a few more small features, applying your patches, and generally cleaning things up. I'm hoping to get to a release candidate before the end of the year.